Summers were better spent outside

Sunday

Jul 7, 2013 at 12:01 AM

When I was 10, we lived in base housing not far from a large canyon. The neighborhood parents, being smarter than the average bears, strictly forbid their kids from going anywhere near that canyon. So naturally, we spent every possible moment investigating it.

Carole Moore

When I was 10, we lived in base housing not far from a large canyon. The neighborhood parents, being smarter than the average bears, strictly forbid their kids from going anywhere near that canyon. So naturally, we spent every possible moment investigating it.

That it was forbidden made it so much more attractive than if it had been allowed, but no right-minded parent would give small children permission to climb steep canyon walls down into a gully that crawled with snakes and other dangerous critters. And since our mother and father lacked the ability to quell our need for adventure, we ignored them. The two of us played there nearly every day, spending a huge chunk of our summer vacation climbing down onto a small space that jutted out from the canyon wall where we could look down and see a small stream that we called a river, but was barely a trickle.

Most days we’d hook up with other neighborhood kids and go on expeditions through the canyon, skidding all the way to the bottom and following the water as far as we could, quitting only when it started getting dark and we knew our parents would be looking for us. We’d carry something to eat and have picnics, pretending to be explorers and settlers, looking for someplace to set up camp. We acted out dozens of scenarios — from being cowboys to space invaders — while traveling through our pretend wilderness.

On days when we didn’t go trekking through the sagebrush, we’d simply ride our bikes until our legs felt like they’d fall off from pedaling. Or we’d put on shows back in some old, unused storage units, singing and dancing and charging admission (something that the other kids actually paid us to do until our mom put a stop to it).

If it was possible to be outside, we went outside. If it was raining or it was too late to go, then we would plunge into the huge stack of library books we had squirreled away. We didn’t watch TV: The only things on in the daytime back then were soap operas and game shows, although there were a few early morning entries for very small kids. Movies cost money and when we did go, it was usually to drive-ins with our parents (inevitably, either a Doris Day comedy — Mom’s choice — or a John Wayne western, courtesy of our dad).

Summers were better then. Plump and juicy and full of possibilities: We were expected to fill our own time, find things to do and keep ourselves busy. The pay-off was a thirst for knowledge and a willingness to explore the unknown. Over the years that’s the same fuel that drove mankind to conquer new continents, climb the highest peaks, dive to depths unheard of and reach up, up, up into the stars.

Today, our kids spent their summers playing video games or making Facebook pages and we hitch rides into space with the Russians.